Growing Up In Riddlesdown

A Memory of Riddlesdown.

I was born in 1955 and grew up in Ingleboro Drive. Our house, number 12, backed on to the woods, and my brother Robert and I would play out there at every opportunity. Of course, as we grew, we climbed the trees, and I still have a visual memory of perching high up in the top branches of an oak that grew on the edge of the woods, looking directly down onto the roof of our house, and gazing out across the roofs to Croydon, and beyond to the Post Office Tower in London. I'm not sure if there was a single decent tree in the woods that I didn't eventually manage to get up into. I never fell out either. Even now, at 66 years of age, I will still look at a tree and think about how I might climb it. Happy days.
There were two bomb craters in the woods, and we would ride our bikes down and up through the larger of the two, then round the edges and back in again. Great fun. The other one was smaller and somewhat grown over.
I was in the choir at St James's Church, and in the cubs too. We used to meet in a wooden hall off Lower Road, but I think it's gone now.
I went to Christ Church Primary School in the High Street and used to walk down there with my younger brother and another, older boy whose name I forget. Unthinkable now of course. Used to get the 234 back up the hill for 2d.
I was 7 and a half in the winter of 1963. For a child it was a wonderful time. Tobogganing on the downs, we would get up speed down towards the cafe standing up on our toboggans, then shoot across the terrace off the edge on the far side. If you could land it and stay standing up it was a great feeling. Even if you crashed the snow was soft so that was fun too.
Then I grew up :-(

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